Junior Doc Jen

Saturday, 2 February 2013

Its been 3weeks since the first episode of the BBC3 Junior doctors program came out, in week one I did an official BBC blog which I found quite therapeutic so I thought I'd follow up doing a personal one.

I love the number of people who noticed that we're always drinking champagne! it makes me laugh. We said that when we were filming the program. When we moved into the JD house the crew bought us 3 bottles of champagne as a 'welcome present' but couldnt help but turn the camera on us as soon as we even looked at one. I love champagne but I dont think I've had a drop since the first 2 weeks of filming!

Its been quite a strange thing watching myself on TV. The worst is when Im not concentrating and BBC3 is on in the background and I suddenly hear "How you feelin.." which is my voice in the first part of the JDs advert. Its so odd! but the strangest is reading peoples reactions to the program and judgements on myself and the others on twitter and online forums. It makes me laugh that people seem to talk about us like we're characters in soap, like we're almost not real. Im really pleased that most peoples reactions are positive and people generally think that I do my job well (which I hope I do!).

I find it hard not to react to negative comments. When people say flippant things or make a comment that is just ridiculous you just want to tell them that its wrong!

There have been many, many comments on the fact that we wear our scrubs home. I can understand that infection control is a very widely recognised issue for the NHS so its the first thing that people would criticise on a hospital based TV show. The thing about our scrubs is that they aren't really scrubs. They're not theatre scrubs, they're a uniform just like a nurses uniform. People wouldn't expect us to get changed at work if we were wearing office wear to work (like most doctors in hospitals do), people dont critcise nurses for walking out of the with it on. The hospital also doesnt wash them for us like they used to in the good old days. Admittedly I havnt done a lit search but I'm sure if there was any evidence that this would help the hospital would plough money into doing it. So I think its perfectly reasonable to travel to and from work in them but admittedly, we didnt need to sit around drinking champagne in them. That was probably a bit far..(haha..)